NHS deal with AI firm Palantir called into question after officials’ concerns revealed | NHS

Health officials fear Palantir’s reputation will hamper delivery of a “vital” £330m NHS contract, according to information seen by the Guardian, sparking fresh calls for the deal to be scrapped.

In 2023, ministers chose Palantir, a US surveillance technology company that also works for the Israeli military and Donald Trump’s ICE operation, to build an AI-powered data platform to connect disparate health information across the NHS.

It has now emerged that after Keir Starmer demanded a faster rollout, Whitehall officials privately warned that public perception of Palantir would limit its rollout, meaning the contract would not offer value for money.

By last summer, fewer than half of England’s health authorities had started using the technology, despite opposition from the public and doctors. The British Medical Association said its members could refuse to use parts of the system, citing Palantir’s role in targeting ICE raids in the United States.

Palantir was this week branded a “horrible” and “highly questionable organization” by MPs in the House of Commons.

The fallout from Peter Mandelson’s relationship with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein also affected the image of Palantir, which employed the former US ambassador’s lobbying firm, Global Counsel.

Before being fired, Mandelson took Starmer to meet Palantir Chief Executive Alex Karp at the tech company’s showroom in Washington.

MPs last week demanded greater transparency around Palantir’s public sector deals, which also include a £240m contract with the Ministry of Defense and several police forces.

In a private briefing with Wes Streeting before a meeting with Palantir’s European boss, Louis Mosley, in June 2025, Health Ministry officials wrote: “Public perception of the FDP upon purchase, and then upon delivery, was affected by Palantir’s profile.

“We do not know the extent to which this has an impact on provision. However, it is likely that it will make it more difficult to continue the FDP and encourage the inclusion of GP data at a local level.”

The briefing was made public under the Freedom of Information Act to Foxglove, a technology fairness campaign group. Officials said the rollout had also been affected by debates over patient privacy and fears the NHS was being “locked in” to a single provider, but added: “Many of these debates are inaccurate and often result from misconceptions. »

Donald Campbell, advocacy director at Foxglove, said: “The Prime Minister and Health Secretary should listen to the public they serve when they tell them that Palantir has no place in the NHS. They should not be plotting with the staff of tech billionaires on how best to ‘mitigate’ the ‘public perception’ issues that these tech giants are rightly facing through their own repellent behavior.”

The British Medical Association, which represents doctors in the NHS, said it “has long opposed Palantir’s involvement in the delivery of care and the use of patient data in our NHS, and it is worrying to see from this briefing that the government has taken the view that public concerns about Palantir should be dismissed as ‘misconceptions’.

The briefing paper suggested that Streeting could ask Palantir how to speed up the rollout and say the government wanted to “remove unnecessary barriers,” including revisiting “regulations relating to confidential patient information.”

Streeting sought Monday to show he had “nothing to hide” regarding his relationship with Mandelson by posting their WhatsApp messages between August 2024 and October 2025. Neither mentioned Palantir, although in an exchange a little more than three weeks after Streeting met with the company, Mandelson encouraged him to visit the United States and said, “You have to plan.” Lots of tech companies and people to talk to.

New figures released on Thursday showed the number of NHS organizations using Palantir technology has increased from 118 to 151 since June, still well short of the target of 240 by the end of this year.

Palantir was co-founded by Donald Trump supporter and billionaire Peter Thiel, who once said that “the NHS makes people sick” and described the British public’s affection for the NHS as a case of “Stockholm syndrome” – the term for hostages who feel a connection to their captors.

Former Conservative minister David Davis said the government now faced a “huge value for money problem” over the Palantir contract. He said there had been “naivety on the part of senior NHS management” in awarding a contract to a company with “a spectacular background given its genesis in the American security state”.

“The government is going to have problems with many hospital trusts and it is going to have very difficult problems with GPs,” he said. “My best guess is that they will never get most GPs with an organization like Palantir.”

John Puntis, co-chair of the Keep Our NHS Public campaign, said: “This looks like another example of a hugely expensive IT contract, and the lack of public confidence will make it unworkable. They should end the contract or not renew it. They should accept that the public is very concerned and that it will make using public data very difficult if people think a company like Palantir will have access to it.”

A Palantir spokesperson said: “Palantir software helps deliver better public services in the UK. This includes delivering 99,000 more NHS operations and reducing hospital discharge times by 15%, as well as helping the Royal Navy keep ships at sea longer and the police to tackle domestic violence.”

NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care have been contacted for comment.